The Most Useful Ways to Use the Google Search Console by John Jantsch Read more in Duct Tape Marketing
Even if you don’t have much marketing experience, you understand how important it is to have a presence on Google. This is the key to getting your business name out there. Google is the largest search engine in the world, and it is often where people go to find new brands that can solve a problem they are facing.
It’s important to say all about how and where you appear in Google search results. If you want to develop a better understanding of your business’ presence on search engines, you’ll need to set up your Google Search Console account.
This free tool is designed to help you measure traffic to your site, understand where people are coming from and what they’re looking for to find you, as well as fix problems that preventing you from putting your best foot forward in search results.
Let me walk you through the distinctive features of Google Search Console so that you understand how to make the most of the tool.
submit your sitemap
When you’re building a new website—or making major changes to your existing site—you’ll need to introduce the new site to Google. Google will consider your site appearing in their search results only if they understand what it is about, and the way Google learns about your site’s content is through crawling and indexing .
Basically, Google has robots that crawl each site, looking for keywords, content, links, errors, and any other information that can help them understand what a website is and what it’s about. Whether the site will be useful to the users or not. From there, it indexes your site; Essentially, it adds you to the roster of sites they can display in search results.
Google will eventually index all sites on the Internet, but by uploading your sitemap to your Google Search Console platform, you can fast-track the indexing process for your site. While it may be days after Google uploads or overhauls your site, sharing your sitemap within Google Search Console reduces that indexing time to a few hours.
find crawl errors
While Google is crawling your website, they will be on the lookout for errors. If your site shows broken links, 404 errors, or signs of being hacked, Google will penalize your website in the SERPs. They’ll guess that your site will probably be unusable to searchers, and so they’ll take you down the results page (or remove you altogether).
However, sometimes, there are errors on your site that you are not even aware of! If you’ve been in business for a while and have a website with dozens or hundreds of pages, blog posts, webinars, podcasts, and the like, it’s hard to stay on top of that maze of content to find broken links and 404 errors. Is. ,
Likewise, hackers can basically piggyback on your website without your knowledge, and use your domain name to host their own spam or dangerous content. This happens outside the confines of the backend of your own website, so it is impossible for you to see the hack through your WordPress site or other hosting platform.
Fortunately, with a Google Search Console account, you are able to access all the information about errors Google finds on your site. They share a list of problems with your pages, so you can go in and fix anything that’s causing Google to penalize your page.
Understand query keyword ranking data
Knowing how and where you rank on Google for certain search terms is important information for a business owner. When you understand which search terms are driving real people to your website, you can tailor your existing content to better meet their needs and design them to rank for search terms. You can create all the new content you want to see.
Google Search Console is the place to see how you really rank in Google. This will show you the actual search terms that led consumers to different pages of your site. Not only that, it will give you an idea of ​​your average ranking for each term.
For pages that are ranking on the first page of the SERPs (basically, anything that falls within the 1-10 ranking range), you know you’ve done some great SEO work. The content is strong, and the metadata and description are enticing users to click on the content.
For pages that are ranking on that second page of the SERPs, you know you’re almost there. With this information, you can begin to change your perspective on these pages. Maybe the on-page content itself is great, but the meta description needs to work to attract readers. Or perhaps you can combine a video with existing content that will keep readers on the page longer and encourage them to visit other pages. your place.
Discover Click Through Rate
Your Click Through Rate (CTR) is a ranking factor on Google. If you have good ranking for your page but low CTR, Google can start penalizing you in ranking. Any page that is ranking in the first five links should have a CTR between seven and 10. Anything less than that indicates that the content of the page is useful, but for some reason people are not clicking on it in search results.
With information about result rankings and CTR, you can better identify the problem with your content. In the case of a high ranking page with a low CTR, you know the problem is not the page itself. Once people visit the page, they are liking the content—that’s how your page ranks so well in the first place.
But a low CTR indicates that there is something wrong with the content as it is displayed on Google SERPs. The title may not be compelling or does not accurately describe what readers find on the page. The metadata and description may be misleading. Whatever the case may be, you know to focus on that aspect of SEO, rather than wasting time trying to optimize the page yourself.
Get Definitive Answers About Backlinks
Backlinks are another ranking factor. When your website is cited on other sites, Google assumes that yours is a trusted page that is an authority in your area of ​​expertise. These are major signs that you have a useful website, which in turn will give you a boost in your SERPs ranking.
While there are other tools out there that can estimate your backlink status, Google is more than able to give you definitive answers. Using Google Search Console, you can see exactly where your website is linked from elsewhere on the Internet.
From there, you can work to strategically build more backlinks, or even ask to remove links that are harmful to your site (more on that later).
reject link
Sometimes your content can end up on strange websites. I have seen instances where customer content was shared by strange, deceptive websites. When you want to build backlinks, you want them to be on reputable companies and websites related to your industry or sector. Backlinks to untrusted sites can be really toxic to your online presence.
Once you see where your site is linked, you can submit a reject list through Google Search Console to have your backlinks removed from obnoxious sites. Keeping your business’s online presence clean is an important part of managing your online reputation and ensuring that you continue to rank well.
remove duplicate content
Google will penalize websites whose pages contain duplicate content. In some cases, this duplication is necessary (such as if you have similar content on a standard webpage and then similar content on a printer-friendly page). However, duplicate content can theoretically be used for nefarious purposes, so Google marks all but a large portion of duplicate content as suspicious.
Through Google Search Console, you can see what content Google has had issues with on your site. From there, you can either remove the duplicate content, or take steps to consolidate your duplicate URLs.
Google Search Console is a powerful tool that allows business owners to see behind the scenes how Google is evaluating their website. Using this information, you can optimize your online presence to address Google’s concerns, create content that is tailored to your ideal customer, and ensure that your site achieves its greatest ranking potential. has been
If you liked this post, check out our Small Business Guide to SEO.
